Now temperatures on Venus reach 250°C with powerful 300mph winds. Hawking says a greenhouse effect burned the planet’s oceans and lands, and that something similar could happen right here on Earth if climate change continues unabated.

“Next time you meet a climate-change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus; I will pay the fare,” says the physicist in his show.

Sadly, Hawking is an atmosphere-denier. Venus’s atmosphere is ninety times denser than the Earths. The lapse rate* just goes on and on through 60 kilometers of “air” and Venus ends up with a 467 degree surface, just like Earth would if it had an atmosphere this thick. (See these calculations.)

When Hawking yells “Venus”, I yell back “Mars”. Both have atmospheres of 95% CO2, but one is 467 degrees and the other is minus 40. Hawking may say “but the Martian atmosphere is thin”. I would say “Exactly“! It’s not the percentage of CO2 that matters most, it’s the thickness of the atmosphere.

On Earth, to get the same atmospheric pressure you need to get down about a kilometer below sea-level or 50 kilometers down a mine shaft, which is 40 kilometers deeper than anyone has ever dug.

Hawking can save himself the money for my fare to Venus, and get himself a ticket to Mars. He wants to go to there anyway, so I’m doing him a favour.

Stephen Hawking is supposed to know some physics.

“Venus is like Earth in so many ways,” he explained. “A sort of kissing cousin.”

…Venus is also 40 million kilometers closer to the sun; it spins backwards; a day lasts longer than a year; it has an atmosphere 90 times denser than earth, and it’s hot enough to melt lead on the surface. All this, AND the clouds are made of sulphuric acid.

It’s one hell of a ‘sister’ with acid rain at 475 degrees.

With an atmosphere 90 times denser than Earth, Venus is ‘like’ the earth in the same sense that Bruichladdich Whiskey is ‘like’ water. They’re both clear liquids, but one will sterilize your bench top.

There is something truly tragic about being a physicist that’s ten years behind DeSmog.

174 comments to Earth doomed! Hawking offers to pay deniers fares to Venus: Jo says he can send himself to Mars

A simple calculation would have demonstrated to Prof Hawking that his prophecies “arguments” do not stand up. But to do he would need to assess his proclamations with reason and real world facts. Climatology instead uses fake beliefs about consensus and vague moralistic proclamations. The later Richard Feynman, a much greater physicist than Hawking would have put Hawking right. In a 1964 talk on the Scientific Method Feynman said:-

You cannot prove a vague theory wrong. If the guess that you make is poorly expressed and the method you have for computing the consequences is a little vague then ….. you see that the theory is good as it can’t be proved wrong. If the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental result can be made to look like an expected consequence.

Climatology, in using consensus as a justification, has long since abandoned even making vague statements.

In truth, the only fragile ‘consensus’ that might have existed was of a political nature. This is clearly falling apart, despite the despotic efforts of the Left, the lap-dog media and mindless off-label rants from Hawking. Venus is not in the so called ‘Goldilocks’ zone. Venus has no liquid water, receives 90% more incident solar energy being some 25% closer to the sun and has a trivial fraction (0.05% by weight) of atmospheric water and 2450 times the percentage of CO2 (by weight).

It is with far greater certainty that I predict no yapping MSM journavist will appraise the veracity of his rant.

Glen, I am not so sure it is even Hawking speaking. I have long suspected that is one of his caregivers/minders speaking for Hawking. Last video I saw of had the poor man couldn’t speak he supposedly used a joy stick like input.

I wasted any evening actually reading all the papers. None of the surveys cited actually asked for agreement from a small subset of scientists (if climatology can be called a science) as to whether they agreed that >50% of the warming since around 1750 was due to a rise in GHGs. Further, the IPCC AR5 did not make such a claim. Yet IPCC policy proposals imply that more than 100% of the warming was due to GHGs, with the residual warming waiting to leap out of the oceans at some time in the future. Yet those same calculations to restrain warming to 1.5C or 2C assume there is little or no warming in the pipeline.

There are four levels of statements.
First is the unbiased, objective, evidence that concludes that any part of the warming that can be explained by rising GHGs can also be explained by natural variations.
Second is the IPCC which claims >50% of the warming since 1950 can be explained by rising GHGs. I found the evidence to support the claim is deeply flawed.
Third, is the consensus statements, consisting of rotten mutton dressed as lamb.
Fourth, are the statements drawn from the climate models that could potentially justify climate mitigation policies if (a) there were feasible solutions (b) all countries signed up to the policies.

Given what’s out there this is a very serious claim. But it is just another example of how The Warming causes ‘mental dimming,’ as most evident in bearded lizards and CAGW climatologists (even the ones without beards). Expect more extreme stupidity.

The “bearded lizards” paper has quite different claims to be the stupidest paper against the “Polar Bear” smear paper. The full title is.Sex reversal triggers the rapid transition from genetic to temperature-dependent sex – Holleley et al 2015 Nature 523, 79–82 (02 July 2015) doi:10.1038
The researchers tested different incumbation temperatures in the lab, finding that it the number embryoes that ended up as females (sex-reversal happening in the egg) increased above about 31C, with virtually all female at about 36C. They also found evidence in the wild of increasing sex-reversed females.

The proportion of sex-reversed females increased each year over the study from 6.7 per cent in 2003 to 13.6 per cent in 2004 to 22.2 per cent in 2011 – suggestive of a trend.

Problem 1 – Sampling
These percentages were for the following sample sizes.
2003 was 1 out of 15
2004 was 6 out of 44
2011 was 4 out of 18
Given the abstract starts with the comment “Sex determination in animals is amazingly plastic” and bearded dragon lizards have long been known to have sex reversal, the authors should not have inferred anything from three small samples

From the same data I have extracted average monthly temperatures and superimposed the test incubation range.https://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/fig2-thargomindah-airport-152212-month-ave.jpg
Notice that it is only in January that the average temperatures reach 31C. July temperatures average just 13C. Of course, beneath a few centimetres of sand temperatures could be warmer than on the surface and will be slighltly less variable. But proper scientists would have tested for this.

Problem 4 – Australian Bearded Dragon Lizards are highly adaptable.
They are interesting creatures. Omniverous, they can live in groups, or can be quite solitary. Females can contain the sperm for months before fertilization. If living in groups, few males are needed, but if population density is very low, sex needs to be quick less the opportunity is missed. Higher temperatures help survivability, but so does an undisturbed group of eggs. A solitary mother, as opposed to one living in a group may leave a DNA signal. Alternatively, the sperm of a male might change slightly after frequent intercourse.

The Earth IS DOOMED by the word of Stephen Hawking. Its just that our Planet has no idea who or what Stephen Hawking maybe. A rock does not feel. Stephen thinks that it does. His whole life has been spent looking for rocks that care.

In the early days of my career as a geoscientist in oil exploration I was fortunate to meet the great Prof. Sam Warren Carey (pioneer of continental drift and Papua New Guinea geology) and one of his quotes always sticks in my mind:
“Really new trails are rarely blazed in the great academies. The confining walls of conformist dogma are too dominating. To think originally, you must go forth into the wilderness.”

Climatology is now nothing more than “political science” which by definition is an oxymoron.
Its there to provide support to a pre determined political outcome.
“scientists?” who hitch their wagon to this propaganda have demonstrated, by definition, that they are not scientists, just media seeking career opportunists.

If you’re trying to get rid of me you nearly succeeded this time, RW. I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

As for where I got my PhD, well… …I don’t have one. I stopped at the Master’s degree. But the men’s room wall might just be a better place than some universities to get your education. Berkeley is one place I think could use a dose of random phone numbers scribbled on the restroom wall. It might distract them long enough for the truth to sink in — they are lost in space without a star map.

They do tend to build huge edifices from some small bit of evidence, sometimes not even credible much less proven.

I never heard a longer or better dissertation on the wisdom to be learned from the south end of a northbound bull.

But I guess we must panic as they want us to do since one way or another, we are doomed. As the song said, if the right hand don’t get you, then the left one will.

Sixteen Tons, verse 4 — sung by Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and most notably by tennessee Earine Ford who had a number 1 hit with it.

If you see me comin’, better step aside (climate change)
A lotta men didn’t (climate change deniers), a lotta men died
One fist of iron, the other of steel
If the right one (heat) don’t get you, then the left one (cold) will

So one way or another we boil or we freeze. But so what? I never intended to live forever anyway.

I don’t think climate science was your specialty in university, so I think I am as well versed in all things climate as you are.

I have a question about climate sensitivity. I don’t understand how it is possible that the “experts” cannot fine tune their estimates of climate sensitivity a little tighter since we have already seen an increase of 40%+ in CO2 concentration since the 1880′s. Why do you people still estimate a range of 1.5C to 8.5C for climate sensitivity? Yeah, I know that technically the upper limit is 5C, but you do throw out the RC8.5 climate model which says if no changes are made the Earth will warm by 8.5C by 2100. We may reach CO2 doubling by then. When you guys make predictions, why don’t you be serious and say something like “All summer sea ice in the northern hemisphere will be gone by 2014- no actually, make that 2019?”

A persons world perspective often comes down to their associations and affiliations, where Hawking can be insightful in certain thinking his thoughts in other matters are tainted by sins that affect all humans, they were once referred to as The Seven Social Sins,

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.

From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson.

Even some of Hawking’s quotes gives away his possible penchant for overlooking the scientific basics for infamy amongst agitators,

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
― Stephen Hawking

Actually, the “scientists” (now including Hawking) hanging their shingle on Climate Change (TM), bring the whole wide arc of science into disrepute.

It is difficult for the general public, especially those with a liberal education, to understand where the boundaries between various disciplines might lay. What the public hears, is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, about something called “climate”, which is big, and affects all of the planet. They hear people like Al Gore, saying that something must be done, urgently, to prevent disaster. And so his apparent fear, serves to amplify the public’s fear, which then gets translated to include all of the other fields of science, since Al Gore is fairly liberal when it comes to laying blame.

Thus the vast majority of science is brought into disrepute in the public mind, and a real disservice is made to all of the other scientists and engineers that are doing valuable and necessary work, for the betterment of society.

The overall result is a reduction in the public trust in real science, real medicine, critical research, and responsible engineering.

The climate “scientists” (+ Hawking) have this affect everywhere, because they make sure that their verbal effluence gets spread across as wide a range of disciplines, as possible.

Al Gore is no scientist let alone a climate one. I saw and heard him on TV once say that there was plenty of energy to tap from deep in the earth. He said it was MILLIONS of degrees. If that were so then earth would be the sun’s second star circling the sun.

Also I once heard the ex USA Secretary of State Kerry say that the greenhouse effect was like this: the CO2 we produce rises to the top of the atmosphere making a layer of about 2 inches. This traps the heat like a green house. I think he may have been mixed up with the ozone layer drama of years ago.

Yet people and the MSM take these ridiculous non scientific statements from well known folk simply because, well…they are well known.

Sad. I suggest the man has gone way past his use-by date. The man can’t do much of anything but think and try to communicate his thoughts as best he can. His body does not work beyond the most feeble actions. Only mathematical proof is possible for him. His actually demonstrating the physical reality of his ideas is impossible. Because of this, he has no bound for his thinking provided by reality. He can imagine anything he wants and can say the results are his conclusions. I agree they are his conclusions but they do not represent any demonstrated truth beyond that very narrow foundation.

That he expects his imagined results will come true in the physical world is an indication of his disconnect from anything real. Largely because HE is all but disconnected from anything real except for his non-functional body and automated wheel chair. His mind, however good or bad it is, is trapped inside that non-functional body. An object of pity perhaps but not as an authoritative source for what is and what will be. At least not without actual and conclusive empirical proof that, by necessity, must be provided by others.

What’s really sad to me is that he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge and used to have a good brain. Former occupants of the chair include Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, Paul Dirac (who could be a bit strange), and other notable theoretical physicists and applied mathematicians. Something must have gone wrong.

Has Stephen Hawking been replaced with a lookalike? Conspiracy theorists claim the REAL professor is DEAD and a ‘puppet’ has taken his place – and reveal the SIX clues that support the idea
. . .
Some of those who believe he has been supplanted think Professor Hawking, Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, died in 1985 – three years before the publication of his best-selling book A Brief History of Time.

The last lines of the bio pic of Hawking, The Theory of Everything, say he is a socialist. A venture into Google ‘Hawking Socialism’ seems to confirm this. Well, as any student of the USSR knows, there is science and there is socialist science. Stephen seems to have adopted the latter.

So I guess Hawking has travelled to both planets to confirm his theories. Theories are not facts, & will never be factual until proven. Many, many theories abound & will remain theories until physical evidence is produced.
Like “global warming, climate change, composition of planets & stars, gods.

Most of it read like a high school text on physics and astronomy and when it finally got to the nitty gritty about the universe it went off into convoluted hyperbole, complex mathematics and waffle that seemed to suggest an effort to cover the fact that he didn’t really know what he was talking about.

I admire his tenacity in living with the situation he has been dealt. Undoubtedly his very survival has to be applauded, but too often people use astrophysics as an area of study because they can waffle along there with most listeners not having a clue about the accuracy of the work.

The static gravitational compression of Earth’s troposphere is termed ‘isentropic’ not adiabatic. The difference being ‘no work is done’ in that compression. OTOH nothing regarding this atmosphere can be considered ‘adiabatic’ as all atmosphere freely exchanges heat content in order to maintain proper lapse! None of academic meteorology uses any ‘science’. Your “There is no greenhouse enhancement.”, is scientifically correct.
All the best!-will-

“Venus ends up with a 467 degree surface, just like Earth would if it had an atmosphere this thick.”

Have to quibble with this one. This would be the case if Earth had an opaque atmosphere like Venus, the surface in direct equilibrium with the Sun was high up in the clouds and the lapse goes from this surface down to the solid surface below increasing the temperature with decreasing altitude. If there’s a semi-transparent atmosphere like the Earth has, the surface below is in direct equilibrium with the Sun, is limited by solar energy as the lapse rate decreases the temperature with with increasing altitude.

It’s also important to point out that the lapse rate only effects the kinetic temperature of the atmosphere which is largely irrelevant to the radiative balance since O2 and N2 do not emit or absorb photons in the relevant bands.

Locally on Earth, the relative temperature tracks the relative surface pressure, but the mean temperature is dependent on the Sun and the atmospheric transparency and not on the average atmospheric pressure. If Earth had no GHG’s, clouds or ice, it’s temperature would be about 271K independent of the amount of O2 and N2 the atmosphere contains. (Not 255K as ice and clouds also reflect significant solar energy).

Dr. Hawking conveniently glides over the fact that Venus is closer to the Sun and therefore hotter. On the other hand, the “thick” Venus atmosphere is like that of the Earth with all ocean water evaporated.

Venus has far less water than the Earth, although that which it does have is all in the atmosphere. Unlike Earth, where clouds and the surface are thermodynamically connected through evaporation and precipitation, the Venusian clouds are thermodynamically disconnected from the solid surface below, much like the solid surface of Earth beneath the deep oceans is thermally disconnected from the atmosphere. Interestingly enough, the mass of the CO2 in the Venusian atmosphere is the same order of magnitude as the mass of Earth’s oceans.

It’s hard to explain the CO2 to N2 ratio for Venus relative to the wildly different value on Earth. My suspicion is that Venus evolved as a gas giant and had a lot more gas to begin with. A collision in the outer solar system, perhaps with Uranus, stopped its rotation and sent the planet towards the inner solar system. Most of the gases lighter then CO2 were then blown away by the solar wind as the planet migrated closer to the Sun where this process was accelerated by the lack of a magnetic field arising from the lack of rotation.

Yes, after reflection, the surface of the Venusian cloud tops receives about 163 Wm^2, which if supplemented by the same 600 mw of ‘feedback’ per W/m^2 of forcing as Earth, would result in an average cloud top temperature of about 260K which also happens to be the approximate average temperature of Earth’s cloud tops. The emissivity of the Venusian clouds, like Earths tallest clouds, is approximately 1, which means that they are not allowing any surface emissions to pass through. The Venusian clouds are then emitting all of the power emitted by the planet in order to offset the incoming solar power. The Venusian clouds also radiate down which over time this energy accumulates between the surface and the clouds until the relevant lapse rate is met.

The lapse rate is indeed a function of gravity, but as its name implies, it’s only a rate of temperature change, not an absolute quantification of temperature. In order to apply a lapse rate, the first thing that must be identified is the virtual surface in DIRECT equilibrium with the Sun which establishes the starting temperature, direction and sign of the lapse.

The Venusian clouds are so dense, they make the atmosphere completely opaque to both surface emissions and incoming solar energy and as a result, these clouds are thermodynamically separate from the solid surface below. The Venusian virtual surface in equilibrium with the Sun is comprised of the tops of these clouds.

Even on Earth, the virtual surface in equilibrium with the Sun is not the solid surface of the planet, but the top of the oceans and bits of land that poke through. While Earth clouds are also heated by the Sun, the water comprising Earth clouds is so tightly connected to the water in the oceans, they are the same thermodynamic system where unlike Venus, energy is freely and continuously exchanged between the clouds and the surface by evaporation and precipitation.

The solid surface of Earth beneath the oceans is an analogy to the solid surface of Venus. The temperature of both is dependent on the PVT profile of the matter between it and the virtual surface in equilibrium with the Sun.

The Earth stores solar energy in the oceans, while Venus stores it in its dense CO2 atmosphere which acts more like our ocean then our atmosphere, except that the temperature profile is upside down. The energy that enters this storage medium arrives from the virtual surface above, just as energy enters the Earth’s oceans from the virtual surface above it.

Two things contribute to the confusion. First is conflating the solid surface of Venus with the virtual surface of Earth in DIRECT equilibrium with the Sun and whose temperature we care about. Second is conflating the function of GHG’s in the Venusian atmosphere with those in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Whether the lapse rate represents a change in energy or a change in temperature, it’s still a change and not an absolute. The change in energy is the change in the total translational motion of atmospheric gas molecules which the Kinetic Theory of Gases equates to a temperature.

It doesn’t really matter to my primary point which is that the starting temperature from which the lapse rate starts is determined by the virtual surface in DIRECT radiant equilibrium with the Sun. The lapse rate itself has nothing to do with what the AVERAGE starting temperature will be. Turn off the Sun and the surface temperature will drop to 0K as the gravitationally induced lapse rate also drops to 0.

Note that latent heat can only be ‘transferred’ after water vapor has condensed and the resulting water droplet emits more BB radiation than it’s absorbing.

I have always wondered about our Oxygen atmosphere, 22% oxygen. Then the lack of Carbon Dioxide. Consider that oxygen is highly reactive. It turns metals to oxides. Some explosively. The only pure metal is gold. We mine all the rest as oxides and when we create pure metals again, we always release Carbon dioxide. Carbon is the basis of organic chemistry but largely exists as oxides like Calcium Carbonate. So more CO2 when we make concrete.

We breathe oxygen. We burn oxygen. Everything burns oxygen. So who is replacing it and why isn’t all the carbon just carbon dioxide? Why doesn’t carbon dioxide blanket the earth.

My theory is that it was. It was a CO2 planet and a water planet. Water and plants. CO2 is very soluble and compresses easily at depth and the water is 4km deep, 400 atmospheres. Then first life found a way to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen while creating hydrated carbon dioxide, carbohydrates. Plants proliferated over billions of years, using this wonderful solar energy. They covered the planet and ate at all the carbon dioxide until there was very little left. Then we had an oxygen planet and selfish new organisms appeared which made no oxygen and ate it all. And the plants. Parasites really. Us. So it was animals versus plants and the plants are still winning and we are in a symbiotic relationship. Otherwise we would be like venus or mars, carbon dioxide planets.

Amazingly the carbon dioxide, from which all living things are made, went as low as 0.03% when 0.02% meant the end of plant life on earth, the end of all life. Slight warming has saved us from a terrible cycle and released a little of the vast reserves of CO2 stored in the ocean, changing the equilibrium slightly. The plants have resonponded. No dinosaurs yet though.

I could be wrong, but that is a puzzle. Why all the free oxygen? Why isn’t the total amount of oxygen dropping because of our profligate burning of fossil fuels and irresponsible seven billion large mammals burning all the oxygen and eating all the plants, our making of metals and concrete. Each person outputs about 3 tonne of CO2 per year, but it just vanishes.

So it took a famous physicist to get it all wrong. Embarrassing for other physicists, but a lot of them know no chemistry and no biology and no physical chemistry and no organic chemistry, the story of life on earth. They have no idea that 98% of all CO2 is dissolved in the ocean. They have never heard of Henry’s law which says that heating water releases gas, so perhaps they don’t drink beer. So while fame and attention can be addictive, nonsense is not an argument nor is ridicule.

With a 15% increase in ‘greening’ of Earth in the last 30 years associated with the increase in CO2 (Zhu Z. Beijing University) I would expect the level of O2 to increase due to increased photosynthesis. However, recent research (Stolper et al. 2016) indicates atmospheric O2 levels have declined 0.7% in the last 800,000 yrs.
Two theories are offered to account for this:
1. Increased oxidation assoc. with increased erosion. O2 bound up in rocks. (think Mars or Australia) plus O2 bound up with organic carbon
2. Gradual overall decline in global mean temperature averaged over last 56M yrs meaning the Oceans hold more dissolved O2.

Gratifying to learn that average cooling is as undeniable as scientists who don’t know, claim to know, know by consensus, or know by ideology. Or maybe it’s that they just haven’t got to this particularly ‘catastrophe’ yet?

Yes and you have to wonder at what 90 foot 17 tonne diplodocus ate? Surely not fine alfalfa or stubble. What sort of world was lush enough to support such vegetarian monsters? How tall were the ferns? How much vegetation did it take to create the masses of coal and shale and oil and gas left under the ground? Again, not a light sprinkling of wheat with a side dish of bushes. These dinosaur monsters ruled this planet for 150 million years without a single physicist.

It must have been a high CO2 atmosphere and the planet never became Venus. Prof Hawking should stick to his black holes, quantum mechanics and gravity. We have plenty of evidence before us that higher CO2 is great for life on earth.

Only three things really are required for plants, CO2, sunlight and water. Plus a tiny catalyst like chlorophyll or even the earliest, Vitamin A. More CO2, more plants, more tropical. As if that is not obvious. CO2 is not a stimulant or food. It is the plant and we are made entirely from plants one way or another.

Actually prefer to call myself a second degree vegetarian. Only eat animals which do not eat other animals.

I presume a vegan is from Venus, or at least the star Vega. (Vega, also designated Alpha Lyrae, is the brightest star in the constellation of Lyra, the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, and the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus.)

TdeF, you don’t eat chooks and ducks then? They are omnivores. The eggs from our free-ranging chooks are delicious and they love nothing better than a massive huntsman spider. The one who succeeds in picking it up is pushed to enjoy it in peace though, the others chase her around.

Annie:
So if I get a large Huntsman spider in the house I need to get a chook to remove it. I knew I was doing it wrong by just letting it find its own way out.
Now that I think of it we have a local firm called Chook’s Signs. O/T because they claim to do graphics not eat spiders.

Graeme No. 3, the chooks don’t catch them in the house, we do with a plastic beaker and piece of card. They are then taken out to the chooks…first come, first served. Before we had chooks they would be carried over to the wood-pile or water-race and chucked out!
We have had far fewer huntsmen in the house since the chooks came, much to visiting relatives’ relief.

Not sure if eating insects makes you a carnivore? Would a Caesar salad with ant dressing or a spider souffle break the vegan rules? Without the dexterity to take a dangerous spider out in a cup, it is possible chickens need to kill spiders. Especially dangerous ones. Despite their fearsome size, a big hairy huntsman would not go far as a meal. You can get quite big cockroaches though.

To put it simply (perhaps over-simplicity): starting about 4GYA, cyanobacteria set to work and rusted the planet. They produced oxygen from ambient CO2. The oxygen was quickly bound up in oxides. When the oxidation was complete, the O2 produced was added to the atmosphere as free oxygen which made the atmosphere toxic, forcing yet more evolution to create life forms which could use this directly.

Photosynthesis had appeared with the Cyanobacteria and now it was the turn of animals. Enter the Phanerozoic Age c. 500MYA.

Stephen Hawking is either an example of how stupid some quite intelligent people can be, or he is an example of how much a member of the Socialist intelligentsia clique in Cambridge can delude themselves in the interests of the Workers’ Paradise Party.

Well he is part right although it won’t happen for a while yet you know when our sun dies and does that expand and contract thing .
No need for anyone to worry about it though it’s not due to happen for millions of years I’d be more worried about the next ice age .

Don’t panic Robert. The Sun is increasing in brightness at about 10% per billion years. That will bring back the Carboniferous Age at the very least, if it doesn’t turn Earth into another Venus.

In that respect, Stephen Hawking is correct, just horribly premature having lost or misplaced eight orders of magnitude somewhere, somehow. Must be feeling his age.

It will exhaust it’s hydrogen fuel in about another 4 billion years or so, and will enter it’s Red Giant stage. That will destroy the Solar System’s inner planets (out to the Asteroid Belt). Then it will throw off its outer layers into a planetary nebula and collapse into a white dwarf.

It could turn into an eye-catching spectacle like Minkowski’s star (M2-9), which is thought to have originally been a main sequence G-type star similar to the sun. (I use the Hubble photo of this as a desktop wall-paper and NGC 6543, the Cats Eye Nebula as another) Whatever happens, life on Earth will not survive this stage of the Sun’s life cycle.

Not much of a mathematical genius if he thinks 8.1ph is less than 7.0ph !

Hawking’s not a chemist. His main contributions are in uniting/reconciling special relativity and quantum mechanics. He’s been responsible for much of modern Physics’ concepts and thinking about cosmological black holes or gravitational singularities.

I could have given him some help there: my desk does a very good imitation of a small black hole, swallowing bills and other small but important pieces of paper. Fortunately, information is usually emitted in a timely fashion, not quite Hawking Radiation but maybe an analogue, which keeps me out of trouble.

He’s slipped a few orders of magnitude with his latest decimal points in his climate outbursts. I rather suspect he’s done no personal research/reading at all deeply into the matter, just accepted, and trusted, what he’s read/been told uncritically. That is really no excuse for the scepticism all scientists are supposed to bring to bear on any subject.

Good analogy. In reality he’s just a cosmological philosopher who comes up with a theory about everything, which in fact is a theory about nothing. He is a con artist much like most global warming alarmists.

Probes that descend through the atmosphere of Venus show that at the same atmospheric pressure as Earth, temperatures are the same or even very slightly lower than Earth. Corrected of course for the different distance to the sun.

Hawking has made great contributions to Cosmology and black holes in particular. However he has often been spectacularly wrong. For example he bet the Higgs boson did not exist. “Higgs criticising Hawking’s work and complaining that Hawking’s “celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have“. Higgs Boson was found after all and Higgs won the Nobel prize. This at least was in his area of expertise.

It is absurd for Hawking to make such grandiose and really absurd statements about the climate of planets when as far as I can tell, he has no expertise at all in such things. However he has now lent his considerable fame to the idea that a 2C increase in the temperature of the planet will be the end of humanity. Why he has done this is the only question.

TdeF,
I suspect that it’s because he never did the due diligence himself and like so many others just can’t accept the fact that so many ostensibly intelligent scientists are so absolutely wrong about something so important, so he blindly takes them at their word. Perhaps he should apply his mind to connect the dots between the trivially and unambiguously calculated sensitivity of an ideal BB Earth (no GHG’s or clouds) and the absurdly high sensitivity the IPCC claims arises as the result of a few trace gases.

It just means that Jo is doing a tremendous job seeking out and exposing the hypocrisy of the Warmists. We need to ensure every case that she exposes is widely disseminated to friends and acquaintances.

Does climate change threaten us? No. It’s part of who we are since massive climate changes during recent glacial periods selected us for intelligence and adaptation to changing conditions.

Here is a narrative poem, “Odyssey from Africa”, which follows the first modern human migrants out of Africa on their epic exodus, and illustrates the critical role of climate change in our own evolution. (And Australia even gets a mention!)

o/t update. FakeNewsMSM cheering Merkel coalition deal, but Reuters/Bloomberg/Deutsche Welle & others I’ve seen are making no mention of climate/Paris/etc.
however,

12 Jan: CarbonPulse: Germany coalition envoys agree deal to close gap to 2020 climate goal
Germany’s two largest political parties have struck a tentative deal for a new coalition government that would involve additional measures to meet the country’s domestic 2020 climate goal, after widespread condemnation followed reports earlier this week that they would abandon the target.

CarbonPulse might be exaggerating a little:

12 Jan: BusinessGreen: Madeleine Cuff: Green goals: Merkel agrees coalition blueprint with SPD
Deal could revive Germany’s ‘grand coalition’ and retain long term emission targets, but negotiating blueprint remains light on details for future climate strategy…
However, the document fails to list climate change as a main priority for either party, and leaves the door open for Germany to miss its 2020 climate goals.
The draft deal affirms the country’s 2020, 2030, and 2050 emissions goals, but with Germany way off track to meet its 2020 target the document proposes a commission to find measures by the end of 2018 to close the gap ‘as far as possible’, rather than offering an absolute commitment to meet the target…

However, the paper provides scant details on any climate policy agreement and is also quiet on strategies to ensure Germany transitions to the widespread use of electric vehicles in the coming decades, a move that is crucial to Germany’s decarbonisation efforts…

The agreement is likely to confirm the fears of environmentalists, who have long suspected meeting the 2020 targets will be a struggle without controversial and radical action to crack down on the Germany’s sizeable coal industry…

12 Jan: BBC: Germany coalition talks: Merkel welcomes breakthrough
The German daily Die Zeit published the text of the CDU/CSU-SPD blueprint for formal negotiations (LINK). Under a coalition the parties would seek to:….
(final point) ◾Promote renewable energy, so that it achieves a 65% share of power generation by 2030…http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42660761

another man who suffers from an undue sense of self-importance. video appears to be last Nov’s CNN doco, “Arctic Melt”, with Michael Mann popping up in the opening seconds:

11 Jan: CNN: Jeffrey Sachs: A bold bid for climate justice
VIDEO: Watch the full “Global Warning” special 23:06
Editor’s Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
Big Oil bought the Republican Congress with massive campaign donations. Republican senators led the witless Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris Agreement…

There are alternatives to runaway climate change. North America has vast reserves of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and other zero-carbon energy to power the United States, Canada, and Mexico. New York can go green and electric by midcentury through electric vehicles, electricity-powered public transit, and electric heat pumps for buildings, powered by electricity from wind, solar and hydroelectric power.

The city has produced a road map to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. Based on the rapid progress of zero-carbon energy systems and smart cities, I believe that a 100% reduction — full decarbonization — is likely to be feasible and advisable, well before 2050.

Despite these effective and economical options, the retrograde coal, oil and gas producers are trying to stop the transition to clean and safe energy…
The city (NYC) announced two important steps this week. The first is divestment — selling the investments in fossil fuel companies that are in the city’s $189 billion pension funds.
Fossil fuel is a lousy investment in the 21st century…
The second step is a lawsuit calling for five major oil companies…

Despite these effective and economical options, the retrograde coal, oil and gas producers are trying to stop the transition to clean and safe energy…

Now, why do I think that sentence came directly out of a marketing brochure?

Perhaps it is because they go on to say, “North America has vast reserves of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and other zero-carbon energy to power the United States, Canada, and Mexico”.

Which begs the question, “Where do they keep these vast reserves of wind?” I mean, curious people would like to know. And while I am at it, where do they keep their solar reserves on cloudy days, or at night, for that matter? Oh yes, of course, silly of me. They keep their reserves in lots of big batteries, that would otherwise be in cars and trucks. But my real curiosity is pricked by the idea that they have found a geothermal field that has not previously been exploited. A geothermal field is pretty hard to hide, without people stumbling over them. Besides, the smell tends to give them away – the geothermal field – not the people.

If you replace the reference to North America, with one referring to New Zealand, then I would not be so suspicious that they have taken the entire blurb from a New Zealand brochure, and replaced the country name.

“The standard text book shape shifting language of climate alarmist science” or “how to deny what I said when I said it!

In the second episode of his new series “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places,” the British physicist warns Earth —could soon become as hot as Venus—[ I'm guessing about all of this but, hey I'm a prominent scientist so the herd will believe me ].— if— [ I'm still guessing on this whole bloody thing again but it makes me look good ] action to halt climate change is not taken immediately.

Now temperatures on Venus reach 250°C with powerful 300mph winds. Hawking says a —greenhouse effect burned the planet’s oceans and lands, —[ assumptions layered on assumptions ] In the second episode of his new series “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places,” the British physicist warns Earth —could soon become as hot as Venus —[ Predictions , predictions. I'm good ! Should place a few big G bets on next week's horse races] if action to halt climate change is not taken immediately. [ I, the God of the climate has spoken !Take care ye of little faith! ]

Now temperatures on Venus reach 250°C with powerful 300mph winds. Hawking says a greenhouse effect burned the planet’s oceans and lands, and —that something similar could happen right here on Earth if climate change continues unabated.—[ I'm God! Not many can predict the future like I can ]

“Next time you meet a climate-change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus; I will pay the fare,” says the physicist in his show.

And that— something similar could— [ Predictions! Wild arsed guesses which I know damn sure won't happen that way in any case but it sure frightens the herd ] happen right here on Earth— if — [ Doubts? 'IF' maybe there isn't much in this climate change thing after all ] climate change continues unabated.

—“Next time you meet a climate-change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus; I will pay the fare,” says the physicist in his show— .[ Don't expect me to come. I'm too important to risk my life on that ]

13 Jan: SMH: Nicole Hasham: Disruption from electric car ‘revolution’ will rival the introduction of the iPhone: Josh Frydenberg
The global electric car revolution is coming to Australia, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has declared, likening the scale of technological disruption to the introduction of the iPhone.
In an interview and opinion piece for Fairfax Media, he said three barriers to electric vehicle uptake in Australia – high purchase prices, limited driving range and a lack of charging infrastructure – are on their way to being solved…

But Mr Frydenberg stopped short of committing to more federal government action to support electric vehicle growth. This is despite official data showing transport activity, mostly from cars and light vehicles, will drive Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade…

A federally funded ClimateWorks study released in June last year said strong government policy could address barriers to uptake, including the adoption of light vehicle emissions standards.
Labor says it would enforce such standards if it won power and is developing a policy to cut carbon pollution from transport…

Other measures proposed by electric car advocates include tax exemptions, rebates on charging stations, subsidies to reduce upfront purchase costs, allowing electric vehicles to travel in bus lanes and targets for the number of electric vehicles in government car fleets…

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Mr Frydenberg would not commit to adopting such measures, pointing to existing incentives such as a discount on the luxury car tax threshold for low emission vehicles, and carbon credit units for companies that transition their fleets to electric vehicles.
However the government was “happy to hear from the industry” about possible further changes, he said, adding that state-federal coordination was critical to increasing uptake…

for some reason, Fairfax doesn’t link to the Frydenberg op-ed, but I finally found it, but only on Brisbane Times. presumably, they ran it elsewhere. read all for what’s on offer so far for those wanting to buy:

12 Jan: Brisbane Times: Josh Frydenberg: Stand by, Australia, for the electric car revolution
Capitalising on a declining cost curve, new investments in recharging infrastructure and significant improvements in battery capacity, the industry has now real momentum in Europe, Asia and North America, which will inevitably be replicated here…

With these changes coming to the cost, range and infrastructure for electric vehicles in Australia, it is estimated that by 2025 there will be 230,000 such cars on our roads and more than one million by 2030. This will not only produce a good economic dividend for consumers, but also a better environmental outcome…

One of the challenges that will come from the big increase in electric vehicles in Australia will be the demands on the electricity grid. An extra one million electric cars is the equivalent of 5.2 terawatt hours of power demand. This is about a 2 per cent increase in overall grid demand…

The issue is not whether the grid has capacity to meet this increased demand, for it does. The Finkel Review found electric vehicle charging can be ‘relatively easily managed’ and AEMO has said something similar. The question rather is whether with sufficient system planning the new demand can be scheduled to come at off peak times to maximise the efficient utilisation of the grid. With 90 per cent of electric vehicles likely to be charged at home, the technology needs to be such that electric vehicle owners have the systems in place to charge their battery in the middle of the night when prices are low and not at the 5pm to 6pm time slot after work when prices are typically higher, reflecting increased household demand…https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/stand-by-australia-for-the-electric-car-revolution-20180112-h0hazy.html

The question rather is whether with sufficient system planning the new demand can be scheduled to come at off peak times to maximise the efficient utilisation of the grid. With 90 per cent of electric vehicles likely to be charged at home, the technology needs to be such that electric vehicle owners have the systems in place to charge their battery in the middle of the night when prices are low and not at the 5pm to 6pm time slot after work when prices are typically higher, reflecting increased household demand…

“Yes dear, I know that it is 2.00am, and I know that things were just getting interesting, but I really do need to put the car on charge, so I can use it tomorrow, er, um, later today …”

Remember Encarta CDs in every classroom? Remember laptops on every desk? Remember the Oceanlinx wave generators? The Sydney monorail? They were all going to be great. Just like those stealthy diesel submarines which will be baffling Chinese drones fifty years from now.

Here’s the thing with electric cars (aka unrenewable half-tonne lithium batteries that move). When something is going to be good then I’m going to buy it when it’s good. Electric forklifts are good now so, if I need one, I’ll buy one now. Electric cars might be good in the future so I might buy one in the future…if! And when a fully electric truck driven by Rubber Ducky is being chased down the highway by Deputy Dawg…no, I’m kidding (so is Elon).

How many boondoggles, white elephants, turkeys and lemons would we be spared if decision makers had a better grasp of conjunctions and tenses.

Sir, Sir;
We just counted 52 heavy panzers and about 300 APC’s heading our way down the road and somebody forgot to put all our rail guns on charge last night and the solar generator only got a part charge into the rocket transporters because it was so cloudy yesterday.
We can’t get our radios to work because they gave us the wrong phase cycles for charging our model of radios.

smug George Monbiot spouted all the following & more on BBC during the week, only to have The Beeb follow him with a positive business story on Germany’s GDP growth figures based on:

In surplus and growing fast, German economy powers on
Reuters-11 Jan. 2018

12 Jan: Guardian: George Monbiot: (Theresa) May’s plastic plan is big on gimmicks, but it won’t cut waste
The strategy ignores a critical issue: the more our economy grows, the more we’ll inevitably consume.
Those who wrote it are aware of the multiple crises we face. But, having laid out the depth and breadth of our predicaments, they propose to do almost nothing about them. I can almost hear the internal dialogue: “Yes, let’s change the world! Hang on a minute, what about our commitment to slashing regulations? What about maximising economic growth? What would the Conservatives’ major funders have to say about it? Oh all right, let’s wave our hands around instead.”…

… there is no mention at all of fracking. Given that the only sustained solution to climate breakdown is leaving fossil fuels in the ground, the government’s support for finding and extracting yet more of them cannot be justified. So let’s ignore it and hope no one notices…

But anything positive in this plan will be undermined by the oxymoron at its heart: the vision of “clean growth”. We now know that the absolute decoupling of resource use from economic growth is an illusion, and even relative decoupling – consuming less per unit of growth – is slight and unreliable.

The more an economy grows, the more resources it will consume. If it’s not plastic, it will be cardboard, and the cardboard is likely to be made from chewed-up rainforest. Clamp down on the use of cardboard, and something else will take its place.

this continues to be the real “Wet Dream”. “sign in” required to read most of it, but it is accessible in the cached version, and there are multiple links for those who are concerned:

12 Jan: BusinessGreen: Companies are warming to the climate fight – the pensions industry must catch up
by Joanne Etherton, ClientEarth
A fast-changing regulatory landscape is forcing pension professionals to take climate risk more seriously, writes ClientEarth’s Joanne Etherton

Pensions savings in the UK total trillions of pounds – a hefty weight to throw behind climate action. Until now, habitual reinvestment in high-carbon projects has kept the pensions industry behind the curve. But new regulations are set to put the industry on a new track; investment habits that seemed hardwired into fund management must finally be overhauled.

Now is the time for pensions professionals to get up to speed on what the law already requires and prepare for forthcoming regulations providing further clarity.

The pensions industry turned a page in 2017
Last year saw a series of subtle but major developments that will dictate the future route of UK pensions investing. The most major of these was the announcement by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in December of a planned update to pensions regulations.
With this update, climate is expected to become an explicit investment consideration for the pensions industry. Once new regulations come into force trustees, investment managers and advisers will find it extremely hard to excuse inaction on financially material environmental issues such as climate risk.

In March 2017, the Pensions Regulator updated its investment guidance for defined benefit funds to clarify that trustees are required to take into account factors that are financially material when setting investment strategy – using climate risk as a prime example. In May, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries issued a risk alert, calling on all actuaries to consider how climate change affects clients in their fields and adjust their advice accordingly.

And in December, industry body the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) published guidance stating that climate change posed “severe risks” to pension funds’ investments – recognising these risks are for the short term, too – and that they must be taken into account for investment and governance practices. It also pointed to the opportunity for pension funds to generate better returns for their members where they are attuned to climate risk issues.

Changes in pensions investment culture aren’t limited to the UK. Last year, EU leaders agreed the IORP II Directive, which must be implemented by 2019. It will allow pension funds to take into account climate-related risks when it comes into force and introduces even more explicit disclosure requirements on climate risk issues.

But the law in many countries, including the UK, has always required pension schemes to take climate change into account where it poses a materially financial risk. The issue has been that pension trustees have usually seen environment, social and governance (ESG) factors as separate to financial risks. Contrary to popular belief however, there is an overlap – and climate risk clearly falls into this category.

A 2016 QC opinion concluded that trustees would not be properly exercising their powers if they failed to manage climate change where it is found to be a financially material risk. And reports just published by ClientEarth’s own lawyers detail the specific legal risks that may face pensions actuaries and investment consultants if they are not aware of climate-related issues or don’t reflect these issues appropriately when advising their clients…

Will the pensions industry rise to the challenge?
In the corporate world, the financial risks around climate change – physical, regulatory and legal – are being broadly accepted, thanks in part to recommendations from the Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). But while companies seem eager to adopt necessary changes (there were an unprecedented number of climate-related commitments made around December’s One Planet Summit), the pensions industry has seemed reluctant, if not resistant, to get on board with the energy transition.

The Pensions Regulator has previously urged trustees who think ESG risks are not significant to “wake up and smell the coffee”. But a recent survey by industry magazine Professional Pensions revealed many trustees are still in the dark about the fact that ESG issues often pose financially material risks to funds. To protect savers’ pensions and discharge their own legal duties, trustees and managers of UK pension funds, as well as their professional advisers and asset managers, must be considering and actively managing these risks.https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/3024298/companies-are-warming-to-the-climate-fight-the-pensions-industry-must-catch-up

heard the end of a caller’s complaint about this to 2GB’s Mike McLaren during the week. does the public/ratepayers know what is going on? doubt it:

4 Dec 2017: ClimateLeadership: Ryde becomes 33rd council to divest from fossil fuels
Ryde City Council has voted to move its term investment portfolio, worth $200 million, into financial institutions that support clean energy.
It has joined 32 other councils that have divested from fossil fuels, removing $7.15 billion dollars under management away from fossil fuel projects.

The investment performance of councils is monitored by Fossil Free, a project of 350.org, an international activist group that aims to end the use of fossil fuels by building a global movement.
350.org supports councils, universities and financial institutions to shift their money away from the coal, oil, and gas companies that are driving dangerous climate change.

Glen Klatovsky, deputy CEO of 350.org Australia, said Ryde councillors had shown true leadership on climate change with their decision.
“While our federal and state governments give the coal industry ridiculous subsidies and royalty holidays, local government such as Ryde are stepping up to deliver real action on climate change.”

re Ryde Council: sorry, it was 2GB’s Luke Grant, not McLaren, and I recalled he then spoke to Peter Switzer, so here is that interview.

tennis final is on in Sydney, so can’t re-listen now, but I recall Switzer admits “ethical” investments can do well, but he says, from memory, that he looked at one of Ryde Council’s investments in a company called “Oil Search” and it had gone up 12% recently. he spoke a fair bit about how fossil fuels are doing well. better not guess any more:

Never mind, I googled Lead Crystal batteries. Very high price,capable of coping with very high discharge/ recharge rates, withstand repeated full deep cycling from zero to 100% etc etc.
no negative characteristics that I can find. Is the Tesla big battery that Musk sold to SA of lead crystal technology ?

Those old battery designs are still in the wild somewhere out there after their former owners got rid of them for various reasons or they just plain died out.

Now ask those old battery designs and most of them worked quite well until. the until bit brought their down fall for popular use. are now being rounded up by a rat bag bunch of government money snufflers and are being brushed off and shone up and re-issued as the greatest gift ever to mankind brought to you by Cyril R Hampster [ former ] purveyor of Carpet bags and Snake oil sex lotions or somebody calling himself Elon Musk, probably one and the same person.

On submarine batteries ; It was rumoured that the experimental American submarine, then Albacore launched in then 1950′s used so much silver in her Silver Zinc batteries that the USA controllers of America’s silver reserves demanded and got a document from the US Navy promising to return all the silver in her batteries when she had completer her tour of experimental research.

With those Silver Zinc batteries the Albacore could out run a nuke sub [ 30 plus knots underwater ] until the batteries ran out of puff.

‘…the air on Venus thins out as you rise above the surface and cools considerably; about 30 miles up you hit the sweet spot for human habitation: Mediterranean temperatures and sea-level barometric pressure. If ever there were a place to build a floating city, this would be it.’

Amongst my friends the ones who have greatest belief in global warming are the highly educated and / or are involved in academia. I think they see it as supporting their colleagues. Academics live in an unreal fantasy world of theoretical existence very often churning out students that are gullible clones of themselves. It is the less educated and self made business people who seem to understand the obvious and gaping holes in dangerous global warming theory.
I think if one was to plot a graph of level of academic achievement and gullibility there would be a very close correlation with belief in global warming strong evidence of it.

Amongst my friends the ones who have greatest belief in global warming are the highly educated and / or are involved in academia. I think they see it as supporting their colleagues. Academics live in an unreal fantasy world of theoretical existence very often churning out students that are gullible clones of themselves. It is the less educated and self made business people who seem to understand the obvious and gaping holes in dangerous global warming theory.
I think if one was to plot a graph of level of academic achievement and gullibility there would be a very close correlation with belief in global warming strong evidence of it.

13 Jan: ABC: Hail and ice an ‘unusual’ summer surprise for Tasmanians in January
By James Dunlevie, Edith Bevin and Amy Hall
It is summer in Australia but someone forgot to tell Tasmania, where people have rugged up again as hail and ice blanketed the ground.
Fresh from a top temperature of 35 degrees Celsius just six days ago, hail fell in parts of southern Tasmania on Saturday and people retrieved their winter clothes.
The Bureau Of Meteorology (BOM) in Tasmania went as far as describing the phenomenon of the ground being covered in ice during the Australian summer as “very unusual”.

“I don’t think we’d see that very often, but as you know, it has snowed on Christmas Day before in some places, and it’s also been 37 and 38 degrees a few years ago, so we vary quite a lot here,” explained the BOM’s Debbie Tabor…

“We have got some snow at around 1,300 to 1,400 metres, in the highest peaks today, really in the south and west of the state. But the hail usually comes out of thunderstorms, so it originates in a completely different way.”
“From the ground up, it’s coalesced and the higher it goes, the heavier the hail can be. The snow comes from a cold airfield, obviously — and the hail can come from either warm or cold.”

12 Jan: Star-Ledger New Jersey: Update: Widespread power outages leave parts of N.J. in dark. Here’s why
By Jeff Goldman
LINK: UPDATE: Power restored for many, but some still wait
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses across the state are without power Friday due to a combination of issues at a substation and switching stations for two of the state’s major utility companies, officials said.
The overall outages for PSE&G and JCP&L customers hit 50,000 customers by 11 a.m. The problem areas and numbers have changed rapidly through morning since the outages began around 5:30 a.m…

By noon, PSE&G said it had restored power to 35,000 customers though the morning, and about 10,000 remain without power. The company’s power outage map was also not updating correctly, a spokeswoman said.

he probably traded those comments for the funds to continue his medical care, which would be significant. He’d be desperate, he’s going to be dead soon, what does he care if it buys him a year…..
this stuff is all smoke and mirrors anyway
have to look for the reason behind the reason…..

Others, however, are concerned about the social disruptions that the weather condition comes with among others, cutting villages off due to impassable roads. “People are isolated, roads are cut, farmers can no longer feed livestock,” lamented a resident to the AFP in his village nestled at the foot of the Middle Atlas.

***Wikipedia: Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, also called Noor Power Station is a solar power complex located in the Drâa-Tafilalet region in Morocco, 10 kilometres from Ouarzazate town, in Ghessat rural council area.

some detail found here, which is a rare thing:

11 Jan: SolarSpaces: CSP puts end to Morocco electricity blackouts
Sergio Relloso, Performance Guarantee Manager at SENER, EPC partner to all three phases of the ***Ouarzazate project, said one of the main lessons to come out of Noor 1 was the need to have at least six storage hours built into the plants. The tender for Noor 1 required that the joint venture partners – SENER, along with Saudi Arabia’s ACWA and fellow Spanish firms TSK and Acciona – implement only three hours storage. At Noor 2 and Noor 3, the designers were free to decide how much storage they wanted.

Typical peak load hours are 7pm to midnight in summer, and 5-10pm in winter, he said. “There are no issues in summer, because we have plenty of energy. But in winter, it’s the turbine component that adapts to the variations in output from the solar field.”…

At Noor, “we charge at full load, maximum charging rate from storage, as much as we can, and the rest of the energy that the storage cannot admit goes to to the turbine; the turbine absorbs the variations of the solar field. It’s the output of the tower that absorbs the variations… This is a clear example of how the plant can adapt to provide energy inside peak hours,” Relloso said…

The Climate Investment Funds provided $435 million in concessional financing for Ouarzazate. This was then used to leverage more than $3 billion from other financing institutions including the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank (AfDB). Last month, the AfDB committed an additional $265 million to the development of the Noor projects.

Stratos Tavoulareas, Senior Energy Advisor International Finance Corporation, who spoke on general terms about concessional financing to the Seville conference, said developing countries should accept such financing for the first three to four projects. Later, once it is established that CSP or other renewables technologies can stand on their own, a country should no longer apply for such financing, he said.

Electricity generated by Noor 1 costs $240/MWh, reduced to $180/MWh when factoring in concessional financing, ACWA Power’s Paddy Padmanathan has previously stated. Noor 2 will produce at a significantly lower cost than Noor 1: $190/MWh before factoring in concessional financing…
In Seville, Himdi admitted the price was still high, and said the challenge is to ensure that reducing costs is not a one-off, but can be done in a more consistent way to bring costs to parity with the global average or better…

At Noor 1, 70-80 people are employed in operations and maintenance, and an additional 50 in other direct employment such as security, cleaning and temporary maintenance. In preparation for Noor 2 and Noor 3, SENER and the authorities have an agreement to train locals. At Noor 1, 30% of people employed at the plant are locals; at Noor 2 and Noor 3, the target is 35%…http://www.solarpaces.org/csp-puts-end-morocco-electricity-blackouts/

10 Jan: Bustle: 11 Photos Of Sahara Desert Snow That Are So Breathtaking It Hurts
By Monica Busch
Stefan Kröpelin, a geologist at Germany’s University of Colognen, in an interview with the (New York) Times, cautioned against sweeping claims about the rarity of snow in the desert.
“The Sahara is as large as the United States, and there are very few weather stations. So it’s ridiculous to say that this is the first, second, third time it snowed, as nobody would know how many times it has snowed in the past unless they were there.”…

Climate researcher Rein Haarsma told the Times that the weather responsible for the snow would normally hit Scandinavia. However, high pressure systems pushed the storm system much further south than it would normally land, resulting in the unusual snow storm. This particular cold air system was actually the same one to hit the United States back in December…

Haarsma also warned against attributing the storm to human-induced climate change — “There is exceptional weather at all places, and this did not happen because of climate change,” he told the Times. He explained that geography combined with reasonable weather patterns from the north were more likely to blame for the frozen precipitation…

A spokeswoman from the United Kingdom’s national weather service, Met Office, told The Independent that most of the photos shared on social media appeared to have been taken near the Atlas Mountains. The region’s high elevation would make the area more susceptible to snow fall than other parts of the desert, she explained. (Aïn Séfra is situated within the North African range.)…

While the intense heat and dryness of the Sahara has been well-mythologized in popular culture over the years, Forbes reports that as recently as 5,000 years ago, the region is believed to have been fertile and well-inhabited by both humans and animals. This climate phase, known as the African Humid Period, lasted about 10,000 years before dryness suddenly took over, creating the desert we know today…

12 Jan: BusinessInsider: The US Navy’s newest warship is stuck in Canada because of ice
by Christopher Woody
• The Navy’s new littoral combat ship, USS Little Rock, was commissioned on December 16 and planned to head for open ocean the next day, with stops along the way.
• Its departure was delayed, and it has been stuck in Montreal since arriving there.
The ship’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Todd Peters, decided to delay the departure from Buffalo for three days because weather conditions on Lake Erie. It left on December 20, travelling through the Welland Canal to reach Lake Ontario and then through the St. Lawrence Seaway for a regularly scheduled stop in Montreal.

Photos posed on the ship’s Facebook page on December 27 showed it had made it to Montreal. The ship was scheduled to leave the next day for Halifax, Nova Scotia and then reach open ocean by December 30.

However, because of ice and a lack of tug boats to guide it out, the Little Rock remains in Montreal, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, public affairs officer for the US Naval Surface Force Atlantic, told Business Insider on Thursday.
While in Montreal, the ship’s crew has done routine repair work, including on a cable associated with the ship’s steerable waterjet, which is part of the propulsion system. That system has caused problems for other littoral combat ships.

19 Dec 2017: Tasman Times: Hobart City Council divests from fossil fuels
by 350.org Hobart Ben Ross
Hobart City Council’s decision last night to fully divest from financial institutions that fund the fossil fuel industry is being celebrated as a win for the climate and the people of Hobart.
350 Australia congratulates Hobart City Council on its decision to fully divest, said Deputy CEO ***Glen Klatovsky…

Ben Ross, of 350 Hobart, said: “When we were campaigning for this change we talked to over a thousand people in Hobart. Climate change is a big issue for people here. We have a beautiful natural environment and people want to protect it for future generations.”
In 2014 in response to a community petition calling for divestment, the Council amended its investment policy to include partial divestment principles, and now, after receiving a huge petition from 350 Hobart calling for complete divestment, and external advice from Macquarie Wealth Management, the Council has developed and accepted this full divestment policy.

6 Jan: Australian: Joe Kelly: Climate group 350.org may lose charity status over protest call
An anti-coal organisation is at risk of being deregistered as a charity with Turnbull government ministers seizing on new footage of its chief executive urging protesters to “get arrested” at a blockade of the Port of Newcastle in May 2016…

West Australian Liberal MP Ben Morton — who wrote to the ACNC to raise concerns about the activities of 350.org in September — told The Australian the undisclosed funding from “foundations” was “of great concern” and blasted the lack of transparency around the group’s finances.

“Do these foundations have tax deductibility status? Are they being used to hide the source of the donation?” he said.
“350.org is clearly a political organisation and should lose its charity status and all the concessions that follow. As a minimum they should at least be required to disclose more transparently to the higher standard like a political party or associated entity.”
In his letter to the ACNC, Mr Morton warned the activities of 350.org threatened to “bring the sector into disrepute and could contravene the provisions of the Charities Act 2013.”…

The deputy chief executive of 350.org Australia ***Glen Klatovsky told The Australian he could not fully answer a series of questions because there was an investigation being conducted by the ACNC, but made clear the organisation wished to retain its charity status.

“350.org Australia takes its obligations as a registered Australian charity very seriously and is working with the ACNC to ensure that we continue to meet its requirements,” he said. “350.org Australia remains wholly focused on delivering its charitable purpose for the benefit of the Australian community.”…

Compelling evidence that the EMR absorbed at low altitude by CO2 is redirected to water vapor has been hiding in plain sight. The evidence is the ‘notch’ in typical top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiation. The notch demonstrates that energy is absorbed by CO2. First law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) mandates that the energy cannot just disappear but must show up somewhere else. Thermalization allows the energy to be emitted at other wavenumbers. The only other place it can show up is at lower energy (longer wave length, lower wavenumber, lower frequency) wavelengths of water vapor. http://i66.tinypic.com/30t79dy.jpg/IMG
Hitran shows gas molecule radiant emission at terrestrial temperatures is essentially all below wavenumber 500. At sea level conditions, WV provides approximatelyt 200 times as many absorb opportunities and approximately 50000 times as many emit opportunities as CO2.

Hawking is one smart cookie.
He is making the point the Venus used to enjoy conditions similar to Earth before runaway greenhouse conditions took hold.
It’s a warning of how things unfold.
You don’t have to look far to find it.

So, you believe that Stephen Hawking, or whomever is speaking on his behalf, today, can make statements, but does not need to explain the scientific mechanisms involved, in terms of chemistry and physics, that would underpin runaway warming on Venus.

Unless, of course, you are one of the non-scientific fan-boys, who believe that climate change on Venus was caused by the Venusian’s, driving around in their SUV’s?

This is a science blog, Adrian. You are welcome to participate in the conversation, but we tend to prefer physical science, over political science and psychological conditioning.